Central government wage expenditures accounted for 7 percent of GDP in 99 countries during 1980-90 (unweighted average … countries, and small low-income economies tend to have lower central government wage expenditures as a percent of GDP. Access to … foreign financing is not; the public and publicly guaranteed foreign financing is often provided for government capital …

better credit ratings, better fiscal discipline, and less corruption, after controlling for other socioeconomic variables …

Anecdotal evidence relates corruption with high levels of military spending. This paper tests empirically whether such … the period 1985–98. The association between military spending and corruption is ascertained by using panel regression … techniques. The results suggest that corruption is indeed associated with higher military spending as a share of both GDP and …

kickbacks these projectspresent. This paper contends that such corruption increases the numberof capital projects undertaken and …

This paper outlines the IMF's perspective on the economic impact of corrup-tion and experience in helping countries … design and implement strategies to address it. Corruption has a broader corrosive impact on society. It undermines trust in … government and erodes the ethical standards of private citizens. A holistic, multi-faceted approach is needed-one that …

This paper presents a model for Inflation Targeting under imperfect policy credibility. It modifies the conventional … model in three ways: an endogenous policy credibility process, by which monetary policy can gain or lose credibility over … time; non-linearities in the inflation equation and in the credibility generating process; and an explicit loss function …

This paper focuses on the role of debt maturity in managing the government’s incentives to use opportunistic inflation … to reduce the ex post real value of its nominal liabilities. The maturity structure of government debt is shown to be a …

A common rationale for EMS membership is that it enhances the credibility of a central bank’s commitment to stable … exchange rate bands and the prevalence of capital controls. In our model, capital controls themselves affect credibility … to reconcile the non-zero width of the bands with the credibility-based interpretation of the EMS …